He dropped his mace and grabbed the keg. With a grunt, he set it rolling, bouncing along the platform toward where Rennic knelt. Hurkel watched it roll, crimson face scrunched in deep suspicion. He quickened his stomping pace. Bobbling, the keg began to bounce wide, drifting off toward the edge. Lunging, Rennic grasped it as Hurkel closed.

‘Let damnation claim you!’ the confessor bellowed.

In one sharp movement, Rennic snatched up the keg and lifted it, both-handed, over his head.

‘You first, fuck-stick.’

He hurled the keg at Hurkel’s head. Instinctively, the confessor threw up his fork-arm, driving the points of his trident into the oncoming object. The battered wood of the keg split around his blow, flooding black powder down his metal-clad arm and coating him with choking dust. The shattered keg disgorged its contents over the confessor’s body, piling around his steel-shod feet, clinging to the tarred and bloodied plates in clumps and runnels.

Hurkel staggered backward, coughing, shaking the impaled keg free, dropping his club to paw at his face with his remaining hand. He was a long way onto the platform, too far for any confessor from the bridge to reach him.

Rennic was standing now, poised at the fringe of Hurkel’s powder-splash.

‘Brother Hurkel.’

In one hand was another knife.

‘Hurkel.’

In the other was his flint.

Chel’s still-uneven breath caught. He wanted to swallow but could not. He wanted to shut his eyes but could not.

Hurkel cleared dust from his eye and looked at Rennic, looked at the blackened boards beneath him, the powder that coated his scorched plate.

Chel waited for the moment, transfixed. He didn’t want to watch Hurkel die. He didn’t want to see him live.

‘Do you yield, Brother Hurkel?’

Chel blinked. Rennic met his gaze for the merest instant, his shoulders twitching in a micro-shrug.

‘Yield, and leave this bridge. Take your red friends back to your pretend emperor. Tell him you lost.’

Hurkel’s reply was a wordless howl, and he surged forward.

Rennic’s hand moved very fast.

Snap. Snap. Whoosh.

The air around Hurkel went first, as the spark ignited the finest particles. Immediately the armoured confessor was surrounded by a blazing halo of light, then the powder on his plating caught, followed by his tuft of hair. Still he charged, as the flames spread down his body and lit the boards of the platform beneath him, surrounding him in an ocean of fire. Rennic was already stumbling backward, faltering for the platform’s end where Chel stood motionless. Hurkel pursued, a black metal demon at the heart of a pillar of flame.

I dreamt this, Chel thought, as Rennic scrambled toward him and the screaming, burning beast came after him. Or something like it.

Rennic was shouting. Rennic was shouting at Chel.

‘—back before he sets you off too!’